Descriptivism, prescriptivism and the evolution of language

[Cainntear]

Sorry, I had to run for a bus, so submitted that last message without a proper conclusion.

One of the most common justifications used here and elsewhere for prescriptive rules is "writing and speaking are different." This is true, but when a claimed rule is ignored by professional writers and editors for high register broadsheet newspapers, then it cannot be rationally justified as a feature of written English.

Consider this: if a learner came into an exam and wrote something that was indistinguishable from an opinion piece published in the Times on Sunday by a journalist who has received royal honours (or a New York Times op-ed by a Pulitzer Prize winner, for those on the other side of the Atlantic), that would be the very definition of good written English, wouldn't it?

[YtownPolyglot]

On a polyglot discussion board, someone asked about the difference between "It is I" and "It is me." The question was which one we would use.

I said that I tend to think in terms of "It is I," but I say "It is me" because I don't want to die alone.

I'm much more conservative about written language than spoken language. I was raised by people who were persnickety about both. It has made a difference.

[Cainntear]

On a polyglot discussion board, someone asked about the difference between "It is I" and "It is me." The question was which one we would use.

I said that I tend to think in terms of "It is I," but I say "It is me" because I don't want to die alone.

I'm much more conservative about written language than spoken language. I was raised by people who were persnickety about both. It has made a difference.

Damn. Shouldn't have read that message, because it fed into my obsessive side, and the curiosity was too much to resist.

So I tried to use Google to find out whether Shakespeare used "tis I" exclusively, or used both. Google lied -- it told me he used both, because when they OCRed scans of "ſhe" (she) it rendered it as "me".

However, when I got onto Google Books to take a full quote of one of the erroneous mes, I stumbled upon something pertinent to other discussions here:

'Tis not the king, that sends you to the tower ;
My lady Grey his wife, Clarence, 'tis she,
That tempts him to this harsh extremity.

...which is a great example of "that" as a relativiser with a human referent, so that use of that is pretty well established.

In fact, my curiosity took my to older English still, and I found this example (among others) in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales of "that" again referring to humans:

To se my lady that I love and serve

The Modern English translation on the site Librarius gives "to see my lady, whom I love and serve"

But I found something I wasn't expecting in both the King James Bible and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: which with a human referent:

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

(Except that I navigated away from the example in the Knight's Tale and can't find it again!)

I'm feeling particularly language geeky today.....

[dampingwire]

This

The thing is, though, typically the ones people make the biggest noise about are things that have been a minority usage for quite some time now.

doesn't necessarily follow from this:

Reineke's example of the subjunctive is a good one. Teachers insisted on it for ages, and some still do. But the fact that they've been complaining so long proves that it has long been in the minority.

People complain about things that they perceive to be incorrect or they may praise things that they perceive to be exemplary. To go back to "should of", if I hear "should have" and should've" 50 times today and hear "should of" once, I'm going to complain about that single "should of" but I'm not going to mention the other 50 occurrences that left me perfectly happy. If I see "loose" written where I think it should have been "lose" then I'll roll my eyes i exasperation but I'm not going to expend any mental effort on those cases where the usage was perfectly correct.

On a similar note, why do people insist on maintaining an accusative form for "who" ("whom") but not one for "you" ("ye")? It's totally arbitrary (incidentally in some places the you/ye distinction is maintained to this day -- eg Derry (western Northern Ireland)) as they've both undergone parallel loss of distinction and there's no reason the rule should apply in one instance but not the other.

True. But languages don't work that way. Had my ancestors back in the 1500s spoken (and perhaps cared about) the then-current English they may well have decried the loss of ye. To the best of my knowledge they didn't do the former so I assume they didn't do the latter either. No doubt many others did so in their stead. I don't think you can reasonably pick on two isolated (abeit related) chunks of English and insist that they develop in tandem: surely you'd have to insist on wholesale revision of the entire language, otherwise similar anomalies are almost certain to appear.

But then there are other examples where there's no proof at all that the "rule" was ever in the majority. We had examples at uni of prescriptivist rules that don't even match the historical record. And some we even know were completely made up -- for example, not splitting the infinitive.

Rule or "rule" doesn't make much difference in practice. Ultimately how you speak or write partly determines (fairly or unfairly) how you are perceived by the other party. If you're asking for directions, you probably don't care; if they're interviewing you, you very probably do care. I wonder whether as a foreign learner you may care less, since the other party will (until you reach a very high level) be able to tell that you are not a native speaker and therefore either cut you plenty of slack (as long as they can understand you) or contemptuously dismiss you out of hand regardless of the care and attention that you may take in your communications.

I'll never encourage students to write "should of", but I'll never decry it as incorrect.

You give a reason for refusing to say it is incorrect, but I disagree with the reasoning. You offer an explanation for the source of the form, and I'm happy with that, I agree in fact. The form, however, arises from a clear mistake and a misunderstanding. I suspect that this sort of thing is a powerful force in language evolution. Perhaps in the future this particular error will survive and thrive and (eventually) be considered correct. However, right now, where I am at least, it would be heard as a clear error. Surely even if you won't say "This is wrong" to your student you should at least say "Well, you may well hear that, but many people consider it to be incorrect, so you may wish to think twice before using it"?

The subjunctive, in English, is on the way out. That doesn't mean that its replacement can be considered correct: at least not yet.

But it is considered correct by all major authorities. No-one will be marked incorrect in the Cambridge, Trinity, TOEIC etc exams for not using a subjunctive, or for not using "whom", "amongst", "whilst" etc.

They may well allow who in place of whom, but would they allow the reverse?

It was Thomas Jefferson, I think, whom was the third president of the United States.

(I mangled the first example I found on the internet)

The phrase "do as I say, not as I do" is the wrong way round. If an expert in something professes a rule that they don't follow, then logically following that rule won't make you an expert. There are countless stories from various fields of people discovering that the rules they taught were wrong.

People are pretty poor at everything they do. I agree . However, swimming (at least if you do it competitively) has a clear result (you go faster or you don't) and I guess piano playing does as well to some extent (you please people enough that you can fill a concert hall and make a living at it or you don't). Speaking and writing don't always have such an easily measurable effect: that whole communication thing is quite hard to measure. Ultimately you care about the outcome (i.e. you attended the interview and you were hired) but was that because you spoke in a way that the interviewer considered to be acceptable (even good) or was it because the other candidates lacked the domain-specific knowledge that you had in spades and that factor alone marginally outweighed the pain the interviewer felt every time you butchered the language that he or she has so carefully cultivated for all those years?

Languages are a convention, a pact between speaker and listener that allows communication to occur. Marginal uses that hinder that communication are surely counterproductive. Why would you not wish to avoid them where it is straightforward to do so?

[galaxyrocker]

People complain about things that they perceive to be incorrect or they may praise things that they perceive to be exemplary. To go back to "should of", if I hear "should have" and should've" 50 times today and hear "should of" once, I'm going to complain about that single "should of" but I'm not going to mention the other 50 occurrences that left me perfectly happy. If I see "loose" written where I think it should have been "lose" then I'll roll my eyes i exasperation but I'm not going to expend any mental effort on those cases where the usage was perfectly correct.

Again, these are orthographic errors, errors in writing. Writing has certain conventions and rules, that can be messed up and in which mistakes can be made. Also, can you actually tell the difference between "should've" and "should of" in speech? how do you know they're saying one and not the other. Again, though, you seem to entirely be focused on writing mistakes, whereas writing is completely secondary to speech in language.

Rule or "rule" doesn't make much difference in practice. Ultimately how you speak or write partly determines (fairly or unfairly) how you are perceived by the other party. If you're asking for directions, you probably don't care; if they're interviewing you, you very probably do care. I wonder whether as a foreign learner you may care less, since the other party will (until you reach a very high level) be able to tell that you are not a native speaker and therefore either cut you plenty of slack (as long as they can understand you) or contemptuously dismiss you out of hand regardless of the care and attention that you may take in your communications.

Which is why we need to teach the concept of register. We need to teach people that there's nothing wrong with saying "I ain't got no" among your friends, but that you might want to avoid it in an interview situation. This would work a lot better than just saying "Hey, the way you speak is wrong and ignorant."

They may well allow who in place of whom, but would they allow the reverse?

But no dialect, as far as I know, uses whom in place of who, so why would they allow it? I'd wager the vast majority of English dialects don't use whom at all, so it makes sense not to allow it.

People are pretty poor at everything they do. I agree . However, swimming (at least if you do it competitively) has a clear result (you go faster or you don't) and I guess piano playing does as well to some extent (you please people enough that you can fill a concert hall and make a living at it or you don't). Speaking and writing don't always have such an easily measurable effect: that whole communication thing is quite hard to measure. Ultimately you care about the outcome (i.e. you attended the interview and you were hired) but was that because you spoke in a way that the interviewer considered to be acceptable (even good) or was it because the other candidates lacked the domain-specific knowledge that you had in spades and that factor alone marginally outweighed the pain the interviewer felt every time you butchered the language that he or she has so carefully cultivated for all those years?

Again, this is why we need to teach basic linguistics, especially the concept of register, instead of just insisting that there's one "correct" way to talk that's applicable to all situations and decrying everyone as "wrong" and "ignorant" when they do otherwise.

[Cainntear]

This

The thing is, though, typically the ones people make the biggest noise about are things that have been a minority usage for quite some time now.

doesn't necessarily follow from this:

Reineke's example of the subjunctive is a good one. Teachers insisted on it for ages, and some still do. But the fact that they've been complaining so long proves that it has long been in the minority.

No, but just because it isn't a strict logical entailment doesn't mean it isn't true. There is an observed pattern that I was told about at university (above) and Reineke provided one example of it.

People complain about things that they perceive to be incorrect or they may praise things that they perceive to be exemplary. To go back to "should of", if I hear "should have" and should've" 50 times today and hear "should of" once, I'm going to complain about that single "should of" but I'm not going to mention the other 50 occurrences that left me perfectly happy. If I see "loose" written where I think it should have been "lose" then I'll roll my eyes i exasperation but I'm not going to expend any mental effort on those cases where the usage was perfectly correct.

But why expend any mental effort on the cases that don't match your notion of "correct" but which don't hamper your comprehension in the slightest?

Rule or "rule" doesn't make much difference in practice. Ultimately how you speak or write partly determines (fairly or unfairly) how you are perceived by the other party. If you're asking for directions, you probably don't care; if they're interviewing you, you very probably do care. I wonder whether as a foreign learner you may care less, since the other party will (until you reach a very high level) be able to tell that you are not a native speaker and therefore either cut you plenty of slack (as long as they can understand you) or contemptuously dismiss you out of hand regardless of the care and attention that you may take in your communications.

True, but only relevant if the interviewer expects you to follow the particular set of "rules" that are professed, and in my experience, they don't. I have never been interviewed by anyone who uses "whom", for example.

In my experience, if I was to follow the so-called rules, I'd be more likely to be judged negatively (total snob) for it than positively.

On a similar note, why do people insist on maintaining an accusative form for "who" ("whom") but not one for "you" ("ye")? It's totally arbitrary (incidentally in some places the you/ye distinction is maintained to this day -- eg Derry (western Northern Ireland)) as they've both undergone parallel loss of distinction and there's no reason the rule should apply in one instance but not the other.

True. But languages don't work that way. Had my ancestors back in the 1500s spoken (and perhaps cared about) the then-current English they may well have decried the loss of ye. To the best of my knowledge they didn't do the former so I assume they didn't do the latter either. No doubt many others did so in their stead. I don't think you can reasonably pick on two isolated (abeit related) chunks of English and insist that they develop in tandem: surely you'd have to insist on wholesale revision of the entire language, otherwise similar anomalies are almost certain to appear.

That's not what I'm saying though. I'm not demanding that people stop using "whom", I'm just trying to demonstrate that the logic for insisting on the use of "whom" is inconsistent. I'm not going to tell people whose parents use whom habitually not to say it, I'm just telling them not to insist it's the only correct form.

I'll never encourage students to write "should of", but I'll never decry it as incorrect.

You give a reason for refusing to say it is incorrect, but I disagree with the reasoning. You offer an explanation for the source of the form, and I'm happy with that, I agree in fact. The form, however, arises from a clear mistake and a misunderstanding. I suspect that this sort of thing is a powerful force in language evolution.

No. There is no "mistake" or "misunderstanding". It's called reanalysis as people's brains naturally interpret the data received in terms of the other data they receive. It is indeed a very powerful force, and it is the thing that maintains a certain level of internal consistency within languages. Language features are not lost overnight -- they die out bit by bit.

Going back to who/whom and you/ye, the death of case marking has a pattern that has occurred over many languages. First, nouns lose their marking. Then certain pronouns lose them. The last to lose them are the most common, the personal pronouns.

English first lost its noun marking. It has lost case inflection in all interrogatives and pronominal conjunctions (except "whom" in certain contexts). The demonstrative pronouns have lost their case inflections. Even one of the personal pronouns (you) has lost its inflection. It is a surprise that "whom" has been retained, and I believe it only has because of arbitrary pedantry.

Surely even if you won't say "This is wrong" to your student you should at least say "Well, you may well hear that, but many people consider it to be incorrect, so you may wish to think twice before using it"?

Yes. I thought I'd said that already.

People are pretty poor at everything they do. I agree . However, swimming (at least if you do it competitively) has a clear result (you go faster or you don't) and I guess piano playing does as well to some extent (you please people enough that you can fill a concert hall and make a living at it or you don't). Speaking and writing don't always have such an easily measurable effect: that whole communication thing is quite hard to measure. Ultimately you care about the outcome (i.e. you attended the interview and you were hired) but was that because you spoke in a way that the interviewer considered to be acceptable (even good) or was it because the other candidates lacked the domain-specific knowledge that you had in spades and that factor alone marginally outweighed the pain the interviewer felt every time you butchered the language that he or she has so carefully cultivated for all those years?

Again, I have never been in an interview with anyone who that would have been a problem for.

But going back to measuring outcomes, my earlier challenge still stands: if someone's writing is indistinguishable from a serious professional journalist's work, can you possibly consider that "wrong"?

Languages are a convention, a pact between speaker and listener that allows communication to occur. Marginal uses that hinder that communication are surely counterproductive. Why would you not wish to avoid them where it is straightforward to do so?

Marginal uses? Marginal uses? As I keep saying, descriptive linguistics focuses on common uses. I can't think of a single complaint in either the parent thread or this one that would actually lead to miscommunication. Ain't nobody never had no problem understanding no multiple negative. (The fact that people can complain about this on the spot shows they know exactly what the intended message was.) Any person that I say this to is not going to believe I'm implying he's not human, and any person who I say this to is not going to think I'm claiming it was him that said it.

People complain about things that they perceive to be incorrect or they may praise things that they perceive to be exemplary. To go back to "should of", if I hear "should have" and should've" 50 times today and hear "should of" once, I'm going to complain about that single "should of" but I'm not going to mention the other 50 occurrences that left me perfectly happy. If I see "loose" written where I think it should have been "lose" then I'll roll my eyes i exasperation but I'm not going to expend any mental effort on those cases where the usage was perfectly correct.

Again, these are orthographic errors, errors in writing. Writing has certain conventions and rules, that can be messed up and in which mistakes can be made. Also, can you actually tell the difference between "should've" and "should of" in speech? how do you know they're saying one and not the other. Again, though, you seem to entirely be focused on writing mistakes, whereas writing is completely secondary to speech in language.

Not necessarily. I've heard people say what sounds like a clear "should of" to me.

They may well allow who in place of whom, but would they allow the reverse?

But no dialect, as far as I know, uses whom in place of who, so why would they allow it? I'd wager the vast majority of English dialects don't use whom at all, so it makes sense not to allow it.

That. And before anyone says that the form exists, it only exists because people who don't habitually use the form are trying consciously to seem sophisticated. That makes it a non-native error.

[dampingwire]

To go back to "should of", if I hear "should have" and should've" 50 times today and hear "should of" once, I'm going to complain about that single "should of" but I'm not going to mention the other 50 occurrences that left me perfectly happy.

Again, these are orthographic errors, errors in writing. Writing has certain conventions and rules, that can be messed up and in which mistakes can be made. Also, can you actually tell the difference between "should've" and "should of" in speech? how do you know they're saying one and not the other. Again, though, you seem to entirely be focused on writing mistakes, whereas writing is completely secondary to speech in language.

I don't know how I can make it any clearer but my original "should of" example was specifically speech. That's why I wrote "heard". I did go on to complain about "loose" for "lose" and that one is in writing but, once again, my example of "should of" was an example that I've heard spoken by my own children, as well as others. It's real. It's spoken. It exists in speech.

"should've" is ʃʊdəv
"should of" is ʃʊdɒv

Basically the incorrect version is my "should" followed by my "of", with a tiny but perceptible gap in between.

Assuming you can cope with 2 minutes of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO2yq1rZZ04 you can hear "should of", admittedly somewhat exaggerated for effect.

Which is why we need to teach the concept of register. We need to teach people that there's nothing wrong with saying "I ain't got no" among your friends, but that you might want to avoid it in an interview situation. This would work a lot better than just saying "Hey, the way you speak is wrong and ignorant."

But no dialect, as far as I know, uses whom in place of who, so why would they allow it? I'd wager the vast majority of English dialects don't use whom at all, so it makes sense not to allow it.

Well now you're just choosing to favour one error (or variant, if you prefer) over another.

Again, this is why we need to teach basic linguistics, especially the concept of register, instead of just insisting that there's one "correct" way to talk that's applicable to all situations and decrying everyone as "wrong" and "ignorant" when they do otherwise.

I still think there's a lot of value in teaching "wrong". You clearly accept that "wrong" exists (the "whom" for "who" example above) you simply choose not to apply it in some situations where I would apply it.

[Cainntear]

But no dialect, as far as I know, uses whom in place of who, so why would they allow it? I'd wager the vast majority of English dialects don't use whom at all, so it makes sense not to allow it.

Well now you're just choosing to favour one error (or variant, if you prefer) over another.

Again, this is why we need to teach basic linguistics, especially the concept of register, instead of just insisting that there's one "correct" way to talk that's applicable to all situations and decrying everyone as "wrong" and "ignorant" when they do otherwise.

I still think there's a lot of value in teaching "wrong". You clearly accept that "wrong" exists (the "whom" for "who" example above) you simply choose not to apply it in some situations where I would apply it.

Galaxyrocker's position is completely self-consistent, and typical of descriptivism.

"Wrong" is what no-one naturally says. No-one naturally says "whom" for a subject, therefore it is not an observed part of natural English.

Some people used "whom" for non-subject -- therefore it is not "wrong".
Most people use "who" for non-subject -- therefore it is not wrong.

[galaxyrocker]

I don't know how I can make it any clearer but my original "should of" example was specifically speech. That's why I wrote "heard". I did go on to complain about "loose" for "lose" and that one is in writing but, once again, my example of "should of" was an example that I've heard spoken by my own children, as well as others. It's real. It's spoken. It exists in speech.

"should've" is ʃʊdəv
"should of" is ʃʊdɒv

Basically the incorrect version is my "should" followed by my "of", with a tiny but perceptible gap in between.

Assuming you can cope with 2 minutes of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO2yq1rZZ04 you can hear "should of", admittedly somewhat exaggerated for effect.

That video is what was most enlightening to me, as in my dialect, there is no difference between the two - they're both /ʃʊdəv/. That said, I still disagree that it's incorrect if native speakers are consistently using it. Non-standard != incorrect.

Well now you're just choosing to favour one error (or variant, if you prefer) over another.

No, I'm not. I'm choosing to favor a variant that is actually used over one that is, to the extent of my knowledge, not used by any native speakers. There's a difference.

I still think there's a lot of value in teaching "wrong". You clearly accept that "wrong" exists (the "whom" for "who" example above) you simply choose not to apply it in some situations where I would apply it.

The only concept of 'wrong' is when it's something no native speaker would consistently say. I think there can be benefits to teaching register and that things are better not used in certain instances. But the only objectively wrong thing is when no native speakers consistently use it. Such as, for example, *'How is he called?' Teaching that there's certain situations to use certain variants isn't the same as teaching that the non-standard variants are 'wrong'.

[dampingwire]

But why expend any mental effort on the cases that don't match your notion of "correct" but which don't hamper your comprehension in the slightest?

I'm not necessarily expending much mental effort most of the time, I'm just noticing it. I can't help noticing it. In my locality cot-caught haven't merged. If my children had chosen to merge them I'd've been remiss not to have mentioned it. It's different and at least mildly confusing if you don't expect it and people here don't expect it. I imagine that none of them chose that particular route simply because no-one else here does.

True, but only relevant if the interviewer expects you to follow the particular set of "rules" that are professed, and in my experience, they don't. I have never been interviewed by anyone who uses "whom", for example.

In my experience, if I was to follow the so-called rules, I'd be more likely to be judged negatively (total snob) for it than positively.

As you clearly believe that to be the case, then you should speak and write accordingly. I accept that I may one day be an interviewee facing an interviewer who despises the subjunctive or who, like Churchill(?), believes that ending a sentence with a preposition is something "up with which he will put". I'm not sure that I'll ever know how many times I've missed out on something because I've spoken a certain way. I do know that I once nearly failed to get a contract job because I "answered all the questions correctly" and that made the interviewer uncomfortable. These things are sent to try us.

That's not what I'm saying though. I'm not demanding that people stop using "whom", I'm just trying to demonstrate that the logic for insisting on the use of "whom" is inconsistent. I'm not going to tell people whose parents use whom habitually not to say it, I'm just telling them not to insist it's the only correct form.

If we go back many hundreds of years there was (as far as I can tell) a clear who/whom distinction and using the wrong one (in writing at least I guess) would have been incorrect. So at that point the rulebook would have been quite clear. One century on from now I expect that "whom" will have gone the way of "ye" and the rulebook will have one line crossed out and a new one written in its place. I view this as a gentle transition. At one point "whom" is obligatory, then it becomes optional and co-exists with "who" and then it vanishes (or rather, becomes archaic). I just think that we're still at the early transitional stage and only the brave or the foolhardy tread that way and you believe that there are now two well established paths.

Surely even if you won't say "This is wrong" to your student you should at least say "Well, you may well hear that, but many people consider it to be incorrect, so you may wish to think twice before using it"?

Yes. I thought I'd said that already.

OK.

But going back to measuring outcomes, my earlier challenge still stands: if someone's writing is indistinguishable from a serious professional journalist's work, can you possibly consider that "wrong"?

Strictly speaking, yes. I do sometimes see constructions in, say, The Times, that I consider to be not entirely correct. In practice, if the piece of writing in question is of such a standard that it would be difficult to distinguish it from a piece in The Times, then I expect that I would consider it to be a well written piece. I still might think though that it contains errors of spelling and grammar.

Marginal uses? Marginal uses? As I keep saying, descriptive linguistics focuses on common uses. I can't think of a single complaint in either the parent thread or this one that would actually lead to miscommunication. Ain't nobody never had no problem understanding no multiple negative. (The fact that people can complain about this on the spot shows they know exactly what the intended message was.) Any person that I say this to is not going to believe I'm implying he's not human, and any person who I say this to is not going to think I'm claiming it was him that said it.

I agree that who/whom rarely leads to a miscommunication. The loose/lose ones I've seen were all clear errors that I could mentally undo. I can imagine that it would be easier to construct a plausible but ambiguous example with lose/loose than with who/whom.

But this:

Ain't nobody never had no problem understanding no multiple negative.

That's clearly unclear. I think you are saying that no-one has ever had a problem understanding a double negative. Now if you'd said

I ain't no magician, I'm a doctor, Jim

I could parse your double negative simply and quickly and be confident that you meant

I'm not a magician, I'm a doctor, Jim

.

I certainly dispute your statement (assuming that I've understood it correctly) because most double negatives haven't entered the standard language (or at least my view of the standard) and so I have to work backwards and work out what they probably meant to say. That's difficult to do because I've noticed a considerable variation in where other people lie on the continuum between willing to rigidly think about what has actually been said and Oh come on. I can't possibly have meant that, it makes no sense. Clearly I mean ....

Double negatives in English can be horribly confusing because there is no accepted standard parsing.